Am I looking in the wrong places or are people remaining unusually quiet about the execution of Yaghoob Mehrnehad? He was accused of being involved in an armed Sunni-Muslim group active in the south-east of Iran called the Jundallah (God’s brigade), who are blamed for attacks on Iranian troops near to the Pakistan/Aghanistan borders. Details of Mehrnehad’s alleged crimes remain unknown but as a journalist for the Tehran-based daily, Mardomsalari and the executive director of the Justice Youth Association (a local NGO) it has been enough to condemn him as a threat to national security, and therefore an enemy of God. In his blog he was critical of top officials and called for the resignation of local officials after exposing corruption in the system.

After his arrest in May 2007 he was sentenced to death in February 2008 and consequently executed on July 5th 2008 along with Abdolnasser Taheri (accused and condemned of the same heinous crimes – i.e. exercising free speech). Is it just a coincidence that a double execution was undertaken just one day after Global Voices highlighted a draft bill seeking to toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society calling for websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy to be added to the list of crimes punishable by death? Maybe…

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Iran, News and tagged as blogging, internet. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.